I was keen to pick up this game based on the unique theme and artwork, additionally my group really enjoys tough coops.

Since playing we have won every game, including two on veteran.

I have raked the rulebook to find out what we are doing wrong to make this game that, according to the folks on BGG and the Dicetower, is so hard.

We are not a genius group by any means and I can't imagine we've just been really lucky every time.

I'm uploading two play throughs (one on Veteran) on here, but I can assure you we're doing the following:

- adding a minimum of three cards from the reserve to the trials deck at the end of each mission- only using speeches once- remembering speeches only discard one card- remembering trauma and phobias count toward the 3 threat mission fail limit- remembering that you cannot discuss cards in hand or support token chose- remembering that when a mission fails (though we've yet to have this happen in FIVE games) you only get 1 hard knock removed if you receive the most support- remembering that you only get the support bonus if one player receives more support than anyone else- remembering to put a number of cards from the reserve deck equal to the number of cards remaining in hand

Usually I'd be reading posts for "How do we beat this game - it's so hard!" For coops like Ghost Stories, but this time I'd really like BGG to help me realise what we must be doing wrong to be cake walking this easy game.

I can just believe that you don't fail a single mission in 5 games.I can just believe that you win five games.

I can't believe you win five games and don't fail a single mission ... You must be playing something wrong.

Walk us through a turn. Just an example turn. We'll tell you what rule you're breaking

EDIT: To be honest, I've only played the original French version, I'm not sure if there are any changes to the English version.

Additionally, eventually we won a game and I am sure using that technique we would win many other games. But we still failed a mission during that game, and it took us at least 5 games to get this far.

Aside from Traps and a very unfortunate sequence of Hard Knocks I don't see ho anyone fails a mission?

You *must* be doing something wrong. There are challenges with all challenge types, challenges with three types, hard knocks with challenge types, and you don't see how you could ever reach three of them? And you have played this 5 times? You've never had the hard knock where nobody could go rest before you / you had to add a card from deck to the challenge after resting / ... ?

I'm wondering if you have noticed that many of the challenges cards are TWO challenges. It's obvious when you see a whistle and a gas mask, but when you see a whistle and... night, rain, snow? Three night, three rain, or three snow will kill a mission just like three whistles, three gas masks...

@ Steven Smoulders: Yep, we've kept Hard Knocks (unless recovered by having the most support, two when we win and one if we didn't, also Merry Christmas). We've not tended to have any Hard Knocks persist for more than a round or two without getting that player the most support (without openly discussing where we're playing Support).

Yep, we've cleared our hands and the deck to win.Yep, we've added the minimum of three each turn.

@ Kris Van Beurden: Yep we've seen those Hard Knocks, but we've never been overly affected by them. I believe it's Clumsy which means you have to add a card, that player has withdrawn early to mitigate the risk and then we've (again, without discussing it) made sure they're the most supported.

@ Kevin Duke: Yep, there are 6 threat types, three items and three weathers.

@ ol_bubba: I haven't watched the WIP, but I did watch the BoardGameGeekTV play through (which is what made the game look so appealing). They made the mistake of re-using their speeches, so that made sure we didn't do that

I've submitted both of our play throughs to go onto the video pages, so if you get the chance to see them it'd be great. I hate the idea that we're doing something wrong - perhaps we have just had the luckiest sequence of 5 games ever?!

While I agree that failed missions are rare (and if one fails, you almost certainly have lost the game anyway), it is obvious that you must be doing something wrong, just as you yourself suspect. Looking forward to the videos...

My first play of this (with one group) went vastly better than the second (with another group). I can easily believe that a group with experience gaming together would just happen to hit on some key strategies the first time out, and since they worked, keep using them.

I dunno, my money was on "not realizing that every card has multiple threats on it". I'm curious what, if anything, is actually being done wrong.

In case anyone is interested, I'm trying to put together a play by forum game of The Grizzled PBF. I'm currently 0-5 when playing with friends in person on normal, and I would like to see how other people play.

My post was brief. There are certain things that you can't discuss, and we took "The contents of the cards in each player’s hand cannot be revealed" to mean that you can't ask for a specific threat to be eliminated by a speech, as that would reveal the content of a card in your hand.

Hey, just in case anyone stumbles across this and is curious, we played again (making sure that speeches only got rid of other player's threats, not the speech giving player) with 4 players and we lost! We had a collection of horrible Hard Knocks which screwed up a lot of missions and the reserve deck ran out.

The player giving the speech can discard a card. This is from the rule book: "The active player chooses a Threat and announces it the other players. All players can then discard a single card from their hand which contains that Threat."

It states that all players (not all other players) can discard a single card.

The player giving the speech can discard a card. This is from the rule book: "The active player chooses a Threat and announces it the other players. All players can then discard a single card from their hand which contains that Threat."

It states that all players (not all other players) can discard a single card.

*sigh* Get the revised rulebook 1.1 (this has been brought up about 100 times by now).

I've played this a few times and so far I believe the game is trivial with 2 players, a breezy coop with 3, a pretty difficult affair with 4 and impossible with 5.

The difference in difficulty from 3 to 4 is all about the ties that become insanely easy to do when you hit 4. I've argued that the selfish hard knock makes the game way more manageable in a 4 player as you know for sure where one arrow is going.